Generative “AI” data centers are gobbling up trillions of dollars in capital, not to mention heating up the planet like a microwave. As a result there’s a capacity crunch on memory production, shooting the prices for RAM sky high, over 100 percent in the last few months alone. Multiple stores are tired of adjusting the prices day to day, and won’t even display them. You find out how much it costs at checkout.
This bubble cannot burst soon enough
It can’t pop if the US Treasury just keeps dumping tens of billions of dollars into it as a backstop.
The Infrastructure Reinvestment Act kicked this mess off, but it didn’t pad the wallets of the right people to the right degree. So now Trump is just cutting idiots and assholes across the VC Tech Sector ten-digit checks to keep doing what they’re doing.
We’re increasingly operated as a Planned Economy that exists to turn natural resources into AI slop, because this is what the federal government’s leadership believes they need to maintain the illusion of control over the public.
That’s crap. They’ve loaded their stock on a certain price and they want to surf the high wave while they can.
They also need to be able to replenish that stock at current prices. I’ve worked retail many times in my life and arguably kinda-sorta do so now (albeit largely over the Internet) and I’ve never run any store where we did not set our pricing by replacement cost rather than original invoice cost. In my current operation there are some rare exceptions for clearance items and the like, but for the vast majority of products we sell for what it’s going to cost me to get the next one to put back on that shelf, not what it cost me for the one I’m selling you now.
I don’t have any insider insight into other companies’ operations, but I imagine a lot of other retailers work things the same way. Especially these days.
Almost all retailers inventory on consignment. So, no.
No they don’t. They purchase at a fixed rate.
That’s Free Markets, baby!
Even in 2025, emerging industries are like “what’s an environment?”
Can’t blame this on not knowing. It’s all just negligence and evil now.
Nothing will meaningfully improve until the rich fear for their lives
You don’t hate AI slop enough…
Well if you know of a better way to generate pictures of comically obese bearded men gayly dancing, I’d love to hear it.
DMing you my patron
I LOVE FREE MARKETS!
I LOVE FREE MARKETS!
I LOVE FREE MARKETS!
I LOVE FREE MARKETS!
I LOVE FREE MARKETS!
I LOVE FREE MARKETS SO MUCH!
hmm I got 2 8bg ddr4 sticks, anyone wanna make an offer?
$3.50
Dammit monster! Get off my lawn! I ain’t giving you no tree-fitty!
I gave him a dollar so he’d go away.
Huh, you got 2 sticks of RAM? That’s some next level gaming rig you got there. What do they cost ya?
Can’t wait for the AI bubble to burst and we can all buy RAM at auction for $2 plus a 28% buyers premium.
You can get 32gb of ram in the UK for the equivalent of $130…
You guys are being ripped off
I can see ddr4 at that price not ddr5
Just coz a few stores have not updated their prices doesn’t mean the demand will stop. It will be gone unless the ai bubble pops
Or its affecting America more because of a combination of tariffs and profiteering.
I swear there’s a new gold rush every time I want to upgrade my pc.
Same. Got 3080 for $1,500 usd in late 2020
It wouldn’t be quite so bad if the previous gold rush ended first, but they seem to just be stacking up.
Speak for your self - scored a nice GPU upgrade during the crypto crash, maybe something similar will be achievable after this insanity hits the brakes.
Until the next crisis…
I thought they weren’t using gaming gpus this time though?
This AI bubble needs to explode yesterday, Wall Street be damned.
That’s the tariffs, now. GPUs had come down a bit before the dumbass
It’s why I started treating computers as commodities — I rarely upgrade anymore; just wait the 5 years and by an entirely new system.
Same except for me it’s 10 years.
This is about my upgrade cadence, except for storage. I ran my Ryzen 1600 until the 7000 series dropped and upgraded mobo+RAM at once for about $600.
I then moved the old parts to another case to use as a low load server only for both the motherboard and CPU die within a few weeks. 🫡
Yeah, i think the correct response to planned obsolescence from the side of computer manufacturers is to exclusively buy products from companies who have produced long-living machines in the past.
That gives manufacturers an incentive to make the machines they produce last longer, instead of shorter to sell newer products more frequently.
because we’re in an era where there always will be a gold rush for a specific component. upgrades have slowed down considerably in the past 10 years, my laptop is 4 years old and still kicks like the first day, I still game on my 8 year old laptop which is permanently attached to the TV and running as a steam machine with more than decent performance.
this wasn’t even thinkable in the 00’s
I’m pretty sure after hard disks, GPUs, rams the next shortage is either Arm CPUs or a specific future type of PSUs
So it’s your fault…
First they came for the hard drives, and I did not speak out because I didn’t need a hard drive. Then they came for the GPUs and I did not speak out because I had a pretty dope GPU. Then they came for my 8gb of ram and there was nobody left to speak out for me.
I have 128gb of corsair ddr5 in my closet. IM RICH!
Just did a quick check, it’s worth double what I paid for it. I’ll just let it sit in my closet until it’s worthless.
I also have 128gb of ddr5 ram
And 64gb of ddr5 ram
And some laptop ddr5 ram
I’m going to wrap them all in Saran Wrap and stick them up my ass so my brain works faster
brAIn power.
Is it sitting on top of a pile of beanie babies?
If it’s new it genuinely might be worth 2k. Looked at the prices yesterday and corsair had 64gb for ~1k.
Lol pricing computer parts like they do fish in an expensive restaurant.
What a time to be alive.
Thing is, this isn’t new in the slightest.
I remember calling around to different PC stores in the 90s and early 00s to find the cheapest RAM and hard drive prices.
Before that, I remember my grandfather, an IBM employee in the 60s-90s calling places looking for best pricing on 64k-128k SIPP memory for an ibm pizzabox 286.
That was the norm before it was so easy to buy online from across the country, local stores set their own prices and a few minutes of calling to find the best deal is like searching on Google for a few minutes to find the best deal… But they weren’t doubling in price in a couple months, that I can recall anyway.
Yeah the “shopping around” aspect isn’t even close these days. I remember ~25 years ago using price aggregator sites to pick up individual PC parts from all different websites.
Today the situation is flipped. It isn’t difficult to find a really good price. If you buy all your parts from the same retailer, you’ll be way closer to the minmaxed optimal price than in the past.
The problem is that right now the “good” prices are crazy.
EDIT: Snapper RAM for the man!
In paris there was this street “rue Montgallet” selling computer stuff like that around y2000, the prices for the most sold things were printed on a cheap paper daily or you had to ask. Guarantee? Yes, but it stops when you leave the shop, or so was the saying.
If you want to see a good set of graphs on pricing over time, PC Parts Picker does some good ones. It’s absolutely INSANE how bad it’s getting. The graphs in question.
Here’s some that’s significantly cheaper than the graph would suggest: https://www.amazon.com/G-SKILL-Trident-64GB-SDRAM-Memory/dp/B0BSB94VC2
Not that it’s a good price in general or anything, but if you absolutely must buy now…
Currently unavailable.
Well that didnt last long at all!
I was like DDR4 doesn’t count
One well-documented memory industry trend that is behind the price increases seen is said to be makers shutting down their DDR4 production in favor of DDR5 and other more profitable lines. In February, we noted that the likes of Micron, Samsung, and SK hynix were being rudely elbowed out of the DDR4 market by Chinese players (such as CXMT and Fujian Jinhua) ruthlessly undercutting them in this segment.
Samsung was seen to flinch in late April, as reports circulated that the South Korean technology and manufacturing giant had scheduled to cease DDR4 production in early June.
Now there are indications that oversupply from Chinese ‘dumping’ is at an end, as CXMT has been instructed by the Chinese government to abandon DDR4 manufacturing. Thus, the reported spikes in DDR4 pricing in recent weeks may stem from a perfect storm of the above supply-side factors all exerting an effect over a relatively short period of time.
But still ouch :)
Sells st a lower price: the web: they were Ruthlessly undercutting!!
They even don’t need to lower prices to “undercut”, just not raise them too much!
Oh no.
So even if I manage to somehow get DDR4 for lower prices, I can’t expect the SK Hynix modules.Guess it’s going to be a few more years before I can get a RAM upgrade, or maybe never at all.
It might end up being similar to how DDR3 ended up being more expensive than DDR4 for multiple years.
